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Wednesday, March 14, 2018

It's been a rather hectic time lately, but I have managed to nudge a few figures to completion - so, another casualty stand to add to my Italian Wars collection - the last one was cavalry based, so this time I've gone with an infantry theme.

Here we have a heavily armoured landsknecht with his zweihänder flammenschwert (quite literally 'two-handed flaming sword') demanding blood or surrender from a fallen enemy.

The poor bloke on the ground is a model from Redoubt Enterprise's oft forgotten Renaissance range, while the fellow wrecking his day with the compensator sword was sourced from Oliver over at Steel Fist Miniatures.

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

This lupine fellow as he reminds me of a time when I thought the scariest monster by far was the werewolf.

I was born and raised in northern Saskatchewan, which is pretty much as rustic and remote as it can get here in North America. My hometown was the last bit of civilization before you headed off into the Laurentian Plateau and the sub arctic beyond - literally on the edge of nowhere. One autumn, when I was 9 or 10 and staying out at my grandparents farm, a pack of timberwolves came hunting into our area. During the week we could see them at night in the farmyard, and I have to say, they were pretty magnificent creatures - scary as hell, but magnificent all the same. Anyway for those few days that they were around, my grandfather, shotgun in hand, would meet me at the end of the road where the school bus let me off and then walk me back to the farm. As a young boy you can imagine how that impressed me.

Later, when I was a teenager, the movies 'American Werewolf in London', 'Wolfen' and 'The Howling' were all released in 1981 and while they scared the absolute bejeezus out of us, my friends and I absolutely LOVED them. We would often stay up late at night and tell our own scary stories of werewolves and work ourselves up into a terrified frenzy. It was great fun.

My favourite of the '81 werewolf movies

Anyway, when I first saw this figure I knew I had to have it as it reminded me so much of those carefree teenage days where primary concerns were avoiding being ridiculed by girls, the next scheduled D&D game and scaring yourself witless watching monster movies.

It's a Forge World resin model, which I believe was released for a special GW event back in 2012. PaulS entered a wonderful rendition of this figure as part of the 'Myth' theme round during Challenge V, and after expressing extreme covetous of the model he kindly sourced me with another that he had acquired (thanks so much again Paul!).

I shaved off most of the silly GW Chaos iconography and painted him as a black timberwolf. The gore effect on the poor Reiselaufer, who's being toted around as lunch-on-the-hoof, is a triad recipe from a Citadel ink set that I've had since 1987 - back in the heady days when GW used containers that actually sealed...

Friday, March 2, 2018

Just a single figure from me today. This time it's an another casualty stand for my Italian Wars collection, a stricken horse and its dead rider - a set that I've sourced from Gamezone Miniatures.

Gamezone has obviously marketed itself as an alternative source of figures for Warhammer Fantasy Battle fans. While most of the castings are indeed fantasy oriented, there are many of the 'Empire' themed figures which will stand-in very nicely for the Renaissance period, particularly for Spanish soldiers of Charles V's reign.

This set is called 'Gloria Invicta' and is probably amongst the best sculpted 28mm models that I've had the pleasure to work with. The sense of movement, the skill with which both figures' anatomy has been rendered and the overall feeling of pathos conveyed by the pair is amazing.

Out of the pack the rider is bare handed, which is absolutely fine, but I decided to drill-out one of his hands and give him a shivered lance modelled from a piece of plastic rod. I like to think that this small addition helps to make the scene a little more dynamic - giving the impression that they have just staggered away from a ferocious melee.

As a little experiment I applied several thin coats of Formula P3 Armour Wash mixed with blue ink on his armour plate to give the impression of the blued armour which was frequently seen during this period.

I've mounted the figure on one of the D-shaped bases that I've come up with for this project. The flat side fits snug against my transparent unit platters, helping to identify which unit it belongs to.

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Staying true to course, meaning really no course at all, I have several irons in the fire with not much to show for it. Nonetheless, I did manage to finish this chap last week while preparing for a game.

This fellow is called 'The Butcher', one of the baddies from 'Kingdom Death'. As you can imagine he's not someone you'd want to ask for a choice cut at the local grocery. In the game there are basically two types of nasties: Prey monsters, ones that the players actively hunt (the White Lion, Screaming Antelope, etc.), and Nemesis monsters, which are those who show up at the players' settlement wanting to experiment with their form of 'population management'.

The Butcher, as can be expected, is a complete close-combat goon. He likes to use his two huge cleavers and heavy armour to get in close in order to dish-out the damage - lots of bleeding crits and general gory mayhem. Last week we had the pleasure of facing off with this guy and managed to overcome him, just. Seeking vengeance, he'll be revisiting our settlement again in a few years as a Level 2 version. Being a sucker for punishment, I'm actually quite looking forward to it.

Similar to my other KD figures, I've painted The Butcher largely in greyscale, with only the lanterns on his breastplate and cloak to provide any real colour. To be frank, I'm not really crazy on how he turned out, but I'm not much for hand-wringing on these things, so here he is, warts and all.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

This week I decided to tap into my inner child and try my hand with some classic toy soldiers.These 40mm beauties were sculpted, cast and cleaned (!) by my good friend John Bertolini. I always tease John, telling him that he's a Renaissance Man. Mr. Bertolini is a master timber-frame carpenter, enjoys the simplicity of manual labour, but also shares a passion for food (his wife is a culinary writer), travel and history. He also has a great love of classic toy soldiers, especially those from late 19th and early 20th century Germany and Austria. John participated in a past Challenge and you can see some of his wonderful work here.

As Greg has been entranced with all things Franco-Prussian lately so I decided to ask John if he could provide me with some suitable figures so I could riff on Greg's excellent work.

In toy soldier speak these figures are sculpted in the demi ronde style, meaning that they share elements of both classic two-dimensional figures and modern 'fully round', or three dimensional designs. I really find the style charming and always find myself smiling when I was working on them. When I was building-up the units I discovered that I needed some standard bearers and drummers. John, being his usual accommodating self, simply got out the greenstuff and balsa and made me a few on the fly - wonderful!

A French drummer.

French standard bearer.

As to painting, I tried to go with the classic toy soldier style. So while there were areas where I couldn't resist to applying a modest highlight, I endeavoured to honour the figures and kept things fairly clean and minimalist. Same with the bases. No groundwork here, just a mottled effect with green paint to keep it nice, simple and toy soldier-like. The banner is from Warflag, with a bit of paint touchup.

The wonderful thing about working on these figures is how nicely they come together once they're all ranked up. I also love the sheer physical heft of them - with all this lead the bases have a substantial weight that just feels so wonderful in your hand. I don't know what it is, but the 'solidness' of the based elements really taps into my lizard brain - something that you can't find an equivalent with plastic figures.

As previously mentioned, John also provided me with a French battalion which I might take a whack at later. To be honest, what I'd really like to do is 1759 Plains of Abraham in this style as I think that it could be quite spectacular. John? Can you whip something up for me? C'mon, pretty please!